


If You Love Her Then You've Gotta

by oneoneandone



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28411773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone
Summary: Let her go.
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Hope Solo
Kudos: 19





	If You Love Her Then You've Gotta

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**   
>  _Hope and Kelley have a one night stand the night before KO and Ann are set to get married._

The room is dark, and cold. The bed a mess of twisted sheets, of pillows thrown to the floor, and bodies, silent and sweating. Catching a breath as their hearts settle again. 

There is no love here. 

Only regret, regret and loss. Chances missed, opportunities not taken. One final moment and one terrible last choice. 

And then Hope, breaking through the silence. 

“We shouldn’t have done this,” she whispers to herself, and then corrects her statement. “I shouldn’t have done this.”

Already she can feel the cold settling over her body, seeping in through her pores. Like a storm on the horizon, clouds gathering.

They’re naked, and Hope knows without looking down that there are bruises already forming on her skin. Places where Kelley’s mouth was just a little too rough, her teeth a little too needy. 

But, she knows, Kelley’s skin is clear. 

Unlike Kelley, she’d been careful. 

Unlike Kelley, Hope had nothing to lose. 

She’d been wrong.

She was always wrong.

—–

_“Hope,” Kelley says, surprised, as they bump into each other in the small hotel elevator, “I didn’t think you’d make it.”  
_

_And Hope translates her tone easily._

_“I didn’t want you to make it.”  
_

_“I invited you because I invited everyone.”  
_

_“I thought you were smarter than this.”  
_

_But Hope had had to come. Had to see the Kelley that could have been hers one last time. It was her punishment, she’d told herself when filling out the RSVP, her penance._

_She’d done the same, hadn’t she? All those years ago. Kelley at her wedding, the last face she’d seen before she said “I do.”_

_The thing about chickens is that they always–always–come home to roost._

—–

She hadn’t meant for it to happen. Not falling in love with Kelley the first time, not having it happen again and again and again. 

Having Kelley at her wedding? Still, now, Hope isn’t sure what she intended. If she’d invited the younger woman just to talk her out of it, just in the hopes that Kelley would make her see sense, that Kelley would remind her of all the reasons it should be them instead.

Or if she’d wanted to prove something to herself, to Kelley. That she could, that she could see Kelley and turn away, that she could hear Kelley’s voice and still, say “I do” to another.

She’d regretted it the moment she saw Kelley’s face there in the crowd. Regretted every choice she’d made that wasn’t this woman, the life they could have together.   
  
Until now, until this moment, it had been her greatest regret, letting Kelley go. 

—–

_“A drink?” Hope asks just before they part, each to their own floor, “for luck?” And Kelley thinks for a moment before nodding, hitting the button for the restaurant on the top floor.  
_

_It’s spur of the moment and it’s a mistake–Hope knows it’s a mistake–but she just can’t not take this last moment of being them. Of Hope and Kelley._

_They talk about nothing, everything but anything that matters. Until Hope signals for another round and sits back in the booth._

_“No plans for the night before,” she asks, already feeling the warm buzz of liquor flooding through her veins.  
_

_“Nope,” Kelley answers, setting down her tumbler, an amber ring of whiskey all that remains of her two fingers. “I wanted this night for myself. The quiet, you know, like the night before a major final.”_

_And Hope nods._

_She understands._

_There’s peace to be made the night before the day your whole world changes. Ghosts to bid farewell, old wounds to clean._

_And she wonders, for a moment, if this is why Kelley said yes to her in the elevator._

_And she wonders, for a moment, which one she is._

_The ghost or the wound._

—–

Hope could lie to herself and say she had no idea how they’d ended up here, but the truth is, she remembers everything. 

The line of glasses on their table, the way her head swam under the bright warmth of Kelley’s smile. How each sip made every word easier, lighter. 

She’d been drunk, but not enough to know no better. 

Not enough to be unaware of the hearts she was breaking when she’d let Kelley push her into the elevator, when she’d let Kelley kiss her against the wall, slip a thigh between her legs until Hope had gasped. 

And Kelley, too, had been aware. She’d seen it reflected in those clear brown eyes. The choices that lay before the woman she loved. The weighing of wrongs, the moment that Kelley had decided that she wanted this, Hope, more than she wanted anything else. 

For the moment, at least. 

For the night. 

—–

_“Come on,” Kelley said, taking Hope’s hand into her own, waiting impatiently for Hope to sign the receipt, to calculate the tip._

_And then they were making their way to the elevator, the hallway dark in deference to the hour. Two shadows of their former selves, of the selves they’d been with each other._

_“Fuck me,” Kelley’d gasped just inside the door of her hotel room, oblivious to the way her wedding dress, hanging there on the door of the closet, had caught Hope’s eye, frozen her in place. “Hope,” she’d said again, biting at the taller woman’s neck, “fuck me.”_

_And Hope had complied. Because in the end, she knew. She’d always say yes to Kelley.  
_

_Even now, even to this._

—–

The stars are still out when she slips out of the bed, gathering her clothes stealthily and getting dressed in the dim light from the bathroom. And she cries silently, sitting on the toilet, because the light of the moon hits Kelley’s dress, illuminating every bead, every stitch. 

She spends a final moment looking over Kelley, sprawled face down on the bed, hair tangled and fingers clutching at the pillow where Hope had been only minutes before. 

She doesn’t say it, the words. But they’re there, on her mind and in her heart. Written into her skin. 

_I love you_. 

—– 

_Hope skips the wedding._

—–

It’s three days later, and she hasn’t talked to anyone. Not one. 

It’s just been her and the dogs and the air and the trees. The water to soothe her mind, the fire to warm her sadness, her grief. 

But life must continue, and so Hope returns from the mountains, the hidden cabin and the river there. The only home she owns where none of the walls carry secrets or memories, neither of her joys or of her failures.

First the dogs are fed, then a sandwich to ease the sounds of her own stomach. And then she moves to go upstairs, to slip into the shower and then in between the sheets of her own bed. To let the sun set on this final day of mourning that she’s allowed herself. 

Except her bedroom isn’t empty. 

Her bed isn’t empty. 

There’s a familiar tangle of honey brown curls, the rhythm of breath that Hope knows even better than her own. 

“How did you–?” she asks when Kelley sits up, awoken by the noise of the dogs or the change in atmosphere. 

“You gave me a key,” Kelley answered after a moment’s pause, but still, all Hope can process is that Kelley is here. Kelley is here. Kelley is here and not in Jamaica or Cancun or Costa Rica or whatever hot, tropical paradise she’s supposed to be in with her wife, making love and promises and everything a newly married couple does on their honeymoon.

“How–” Hope asks again, and Kelley shrugs her shoulders.

“I couldn’t marry her,” she said, softy, but matter-of-fact. “I couldn’t marry her because I’m still in love with you.”


End file.
